COSE announces winners of its 2013 Business Pitch Competition

GiveNext of Shaker Heights, an online and mobile dashboard where donors can manage their charitable giving in partnership with the causes they care about, took home the $20,000 first prize in the 2013 COSE Business Pitch Competition.

Daniel Mansoor of GiveNext received the award on Wednesday night, Oct. 23, at Kalahari Resorts and Convention Center in Sandusky. COSE said more than 200 people watched the competition's final judging event, which served as the official kick-off to the 2013 Small Business Convention. The event featured a celebrity judge, Jeff Hoffman, CEO and co-founder of the Priceline.com family of companies.

COSE said it awarded a total of $40,000 in prize money to the final four participants in the contest, which was sponsored by CrowdIt, FIT Technologies, Safety Controls Technology and 10,000 Small Businesses.

A $10,000 second-place prize went to Erika Boll of The Toasted Oat LLC, a gluten-free granola manufacturer established in January 2013. The company targets wholesale, retail and direct-to-consumer sales.

Bold Guidance “makes applying to college less stressful with mobile and computer-based apps that allow students to manage the college application process from anywhere,” according to COSE.

RonWear Port-able Clothing is a manufacturer of fashionable apparel, designed “for comfort, modesty as well as ease of access for anyone who requires infusion for medical treatments,” COSE said.

COSE said a total of 50 aspiring entrepreneurs submitted entries in the competition, consisting of a two-page executive summary and two-minute video pitching their idea. A panel of experts reviewed the entries, and the top 12 were invited to COSE's offices on Oct. 2 to make face-to-face pitches to the judges, COSE said.

After that phase of the judging, the top four finalists advanced to the final judging event.

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